Pokematic's Big 10 Women's Gymnastics Championship Adventure

Hey everyone, amidst all the craziness with my grandma and dad mskate and I went to the big 10 women's gymnastics championship on Saturday. Since we like going to the UofM home meets and the big10 championship was hosted at UofM this year, we decided to go there. We bought the tickets before the crap hit the fan so we used this as a break. It was much need. But before the meet something very bad happened. On my right hand I have 3 rings; high school graduation, college graduation, and my grandpa's ring. When I left I was very certain I put all 3 rings on, and as we were driving to the meet I noticed my grandpa's ring was missing. I felt "comfortable" since I knew it was somewhere recent; the stairs by where I keep my hat and accessories, the stairs, the attached garage (possibly the recycling bin), or somewhere in the car. When we got to the meet we looked around in the car but couldn't find it, looked around the car to make sure it didn't fall out, and it wasn't there. OK, look when I get home. But wait, there's more. Since this is a long meet I brought our power brick to charge our phones and mskate's insulin pump, and because mskate has diabetes I had sugar snacks in my pocket, and because I have big pockets I happened to have a tin of almonds in my pocket. I also normally carry a pocket knife multi-tool, but I knew better than to bring that. We go through security and I get buzzed, I walk over to the side and upon emptying just 2 of my pockets the guy said "there's all your contraband, put it in your car or throw it away." I hurry back to the car and drop everything off, and all the while mskate is waiting just past security because the tickets were on her phone. I still got some sugars in (because diabetes, ADA says "this is medicine and overpriced stadium food is not a reasonable accommodation to prevent a diabetic from having an outside bag of skittles"), and I'm pretty sure it was the almonds since last time we got the charging brick in. Whatever.

OK, now we're in and we need to find our seats. Normally it's general admission so we found seats around where we were last time, but when mskate noticed people were getting kicked out of their seats she realized that seats were assigned and we were in someone else's seats and had to find our own. Ours ended up being wheelchair accessibility seats, and we don't have wheelchairs. Apparently this was kind of common since they were setting up folding chairs for people who needed them, and the seats were pretty comfortable so it wasn't a big deal. We wanted to make sure we had good seats for the vault and these were good. I got us stadium nachos to split as we watched the warmup. It was pretty good, and then there was the walk out and that was good. 

The match was against UCLA, UofM, MSU, and some other school with an "M" for the logo. First UCLA was on vault, UofM was on uneven bars, MSU was on balance beam, and "other school" was doing the floor routine. All of them did really well, lot's of 9.9 and other high scores, but then something REALLY cool happened, Stephen of Michigan State scored a 10 on balance beam. That was SO cool, and I think afterwards she did a crowd surf with her team. During the rotations there was a hype man MC who went around interviewing people on the jumbotron and he started with MSU asking them what it was like to see a 10, and people were very happy. Then there was the selfie cam thing and mskate and I got on it with our signs and dancing. That was really fun.

Now in this rotation it was UCLA on bars, UofM on beam, MSU on floor, and "other school" on vault. I don't have a lot to say on this one, except UCLA did really well on bars with everyone scoring a 9.9 except for one woman who got 9.95. This time the hype man went to UofM where he interviewed UofM men's gymnast and olympian Paul Juda as he was in the crowd and cheering for his girlfriend and promoting next week's men's meet. This was also when mskate got us ice cream, chocolate peanut butter I think it was.

Third rotation, UCLA on beam, UofM on floor, MSU on vault, and "other school" on uneven bars. What happened? Oh just another 10, also on balance beam, Alipio of UCLA. The MC was celebrating and I got him on camera. Way cool, 2 10's in a single meet. After that win MC hypeman came to the UCLA section where we were sitting, and I got some good up close pictures since he was standing right by the accessibility section as they were getting ready to interview. Really fun. We were also in the background of the interview, not easy to see but my high viz safety yellow jacket was visible.

Now for the final rotation, UCLA on floor, UofM on vault, MSU on uneven bars, and "other school" on balance beam. I think we should either call this meet "the 10 meet" or UCLA "the 10 school," because they scored 2 10s on floor bringing their total up to 3 and the night's total up to 4 (Moors and Chiles got the 10s BTW). Yeah, they were some impressive routines. Rotations over and ceremony getting set-up, the MC went to "the other school" section and interviewed them, especially the guy in the fedora and beaver tail.

Now time for the award ceremony. There's not too much to say, but there are pictures to show. It was kind of neat watching 11 teams squeeze on the floor routine floor (why 11? because there was an 11th school that was added to the big 10).

Bars Winners

Beam Winners

Floor Winners (sorry, don't know what happened to vault)

All Around Winners

And then I forgot the context here, but it was "celebrate the whole team and cram them on the podium."

We were able to get home without much trouble. Once we got home I dug through the recycling bin looking for my ring and it wasn't there. I looked through the stairs and garage, not there. Mskate looked at the landing and stairs, not there. I dug through the little garbage in the kitchen and not there. I looked through the car again but not there. It wasn't until I completely cleaned out the car and moved all the seats the next day did I find the ring between the drivers seat and the center console unit under the rails that the seat placement adjusts on. I saw something a little shiny and round, so I reached to it and there it was. I exclaimed really happy. I was a bit worried that it might have fallen into the back seat vent that's under the driver and passenger seats, but when I saw that my fingers wouldn't fit in the holes I was confident that my ring that's larger than my finger wouldn't fit. It was a bright little event in an otherwise dark point. Well this has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.

UofM Men's and Women's Gymnastics, Men's VS Ohio State, Women's VS Alabama University (And Some Other Weekend Events)

Hey everyone, we had another fun time with college gymnastics at University of Michigan. But first, Friday was a "sad gathering." My grandma is having problems with bed sores after her broken hip surgery among many other things, and the bed sores got really bad all of the sudden, so we had our priest friend come and give her anointing of the sick/last rites. We went to her assisted living facility and had cheese pizza and bread sticks (because Friday of lent). I brought my balloon animal stuff and made balloon animals for her and other residents; yeah, one of my many talents is that I can make balloon animals, I wanted to learn how to do it when I was a kid, got some how-to books and creativity of my own, and most importantly a pump since twist balloons are hard to inflate by mouth, and now it's something I can do. We also got her room all decorated for Easter and spring, and enjoyed some cartoons on MeTV Toons. She enjoyed the company and the anointing was really good. I wear my grandpa's ring and the class ring they bought me when I graduated college, and I had my hand with all the rings on her for the "family lay your hands on the sick" portion, so it was like grandpa and her past self was there with her for this. It was a long Friday night, but a good one.

Now for Saturday. We started out with going to Blimpy Burger as we always do. This time I had a double with a fried egg, salami, grilled banana peppers, onions, lettuce, and pickles with a side of fried broccoli. Mbinski was able to join us and he had an egg sandwich. We chatted for about an hour which is always fun. After lunch we went to the Joan Fabrics in Ann Arbor to see what kind of fun stuff we were interested in. Mskate needs to get stickers for the friends for life conference and we found a number of stickers that would be good for the conference. We also found some blanket yarn that is normally REALLY expensive; mskate likes to make blankets using the heavy yarn, but heavy yarn is quite expensive so she doesn't do it often. I got some command hooks just because we find a use for them and they are kind of expensive. We looked for patches since mskate needs to practice with sewing them, but we couldn't find any, oh well. There was a party city close by so we went there to see what bones were left. Very little was left, a fair amount of fabrics but not a lot of the kind of things we were looking for. In the same shopping center was a party city, so we went there as well to see what scraps were left. There were a fair amount of halloween costumes and balloons, but that was kind of it. I found an inside out 2 mystery toy since mskate is into that, and she found some other thing that I don't remember. Now we went to the meet.

Going to the meet was kind of crazy. Normally it's not that crowded but it was today because the men's gymnastics stadium shares a parking lot with the baseball field and there was a baseball game going on at the same time. As we're driving around the lot looking for a spot we saw the school grounds vehicle with a flat bed trailer taking up 6 spots, and then I found a bunch of soccer nets taking up another 6 spots. What jerk moves, don't they know that people need to park here. We had to park in the student housing, but because it's St. Patrick's Day weekend there were a lot of parties and therefore not a lot of available parking. We had to park like half a mile a way, but it wasn't that bad considering that the weather is nice and warm now. One thing that had me kind of laugh uncomfortably is that there were a lot of shoes on the power lines, and in some places it's a gang symbol of territory or where a member died. In reality it's almost certainly "mark of achievement" for students who graduated, but still, here's a picture of me with the shoes.

The men's meet was pretty good. Today was senior's day as the last home game. Mskate and I got pom poms and a poster for free and weren't able to sit in our normal front row spot because they were received, but we were able to set 1 row back. Why were they reserved? Because there was an assisted living facility doing a field trip to watch the event. It was senior day in more ways than one. Having so much experience with my grandparents I was on guard to help if needed. One thing that was pretty cool for mskate is that the coach for Ohio State is a 4 time Olympian or something. She kind of wished she brought the Olympian shirt, but he wasn't able to sign autographs anyway. When they did the t-shirt give away after the floor routine I went over to where people could see me and did the "stand on one foot" trick thing that they do for floor routine that I can do really well, and one of the gymnasts laughed and tossed me a shirt. I didn't take any event photos this time, so don't expect my "attempt at real photography" this time. The great thing is the shirt is in my size. All the "old seniors" left around the final high bar event, so we were able to go to their seats. That was good for me because my legs were getting cramped. UofM won which was good. After the competition the seniors were recognized with a framed singlet (or whatever their uniform is called). It was pretty cool to see. Here are the pictures I took.

With the senior day event it was a little late in the day, and mskate jokingly said "hey we could go to the women's meet now." I took it seriously and we went to the women's meet. We had a little trouble finding the car, but no real problem as we found the car. When we got to the stadium we were able to find a spot in the parking lot. Of course this is "a real stadium" and not "a gym with stadium seating," so we weren't "sharing a small parking lot." The women's meet also costs money, but we didn't expect to do this so we needed to buy the tickets at will call. We got the tickets no problem and now we have paper tickets for the event. Something cool about this event was that the first 2000 people got a free t-shirt and we were both able to get a free t-shirt. Since we had a lot of time before the event started we walked around the stadium and for their "show off gymnastics" thing they had Fred and Paul.

As we walked around there was a health care package thing that was being given out, and a tote bag that came in very handy with carrying the shirts and some other things. In the bag was a lot of good things; liquid IV, pimple patches, aspirin, bloating stuff, moisturizer, and a condom. I had a good chuckle with the condom. It was getting to dinner time and we had to find something to split. Mskate and her dietary restrictions kind of limited things, but lucky for us the burgers are served open face with 2 patties, so she was able to have the burger that wasn't touching the bun and the tomato.

We were able to get some good seats to see the whole event. We got there for warm-up and watched the warm-up. One thing I noticed was that the leotards were very sparkly, but it wasn't really coming through in photo. It was a pretty good meet. The set-up was one team did one event and the other team did another event and alternate between teams and events, unlike how with men's both teams compete on the same event. I think the order was vault and uneven bars, and floor routine and balance beam. I think floor routine is my least favorite women's routine, it's "too dance" at least at this level (according to mskate). Vault was pretty cool since we were able to see it better. Also, it was kind of funny how there was a fair amount of country music for the different events. My guess is it was "because Alabama." Here are photos I took.

Afterwards they had a recognition thing for the seniors as well. We weren't too interested in the ceremony, but mskate wanted to see if men's gymnastics Olympic medalist Paul Juda would walk with his girlfriend during the ceremony, which he did. At some point during the meet there was a "dance and get on the jumbotron" thing and we made it, way cool. Nothing too much else for the night.

Now it's Sunday, the day where we were celebrating my brother's birthday with the family. We went to a tavern close to my parents house and this is when I had my corned beef on a sandwich. I'm not sure where I could get corned beef by where I live for St. Patrick's Day on Monday, so I'm happy I could have it now. We gave bro a picture frame collage with pictures of him with grandpa mskate has been scanning in, and that was a very emotional gift for him. Then I wrapped him some specialty beers I got from a store when we went on a trip for mskate's training. Overall great weekend. This has been Pokematic, signing off, and bu-bye.